WWT Builds Lab for Testing Cisco Solutions on Google Cloud

The divide between public and private clouds has left customers with a multicloud vision that always seems just out of reach. Cloud management platforms have done an admirable job abstracting the APIs and reducing the overhead of deploying to disparate clouds, but due to variations across clouds, applications often require platform-specific code. What’s missing is a consistent platform that can securely span public and private clouds and enable a “develop and deploy anywhere” model. Cisco and Google have partnered to solve just that problem, the result is the Cisco Hybrid Cloud Platform for Google Cloud, planned for availability later this year.

The Architecture

The Cisco Hybrid Cloud Platform for Google Cloud is built on industry-leading, proven technologies from Cisco and Google as well as cutting-edge, innovative solutions. Cisco’s network pedigree is second to none and technologies like Cisco ACI, Contiv and the CSR1000V ensure a secure, high-performance network experience. Best-of-breed technologies like Google Kubernetes Engine and Google Cloud Platform offer the most robust application deployment environment possible. All of the solutions in this architecture are world class, but let’s dig into the integrations to the technologies that make the Cisco Hybrid Cloud Platform for Google Cloud possible.

The Cisco Container Platform provides a flexible, 100 percent upstream Kubernetes-based container platform while dramatically reducing the overhead of deployment, management and support. Cisco Container Platform runs on industry-leading hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) with Cisco’s HyperFlex offering a truly consistent multicloud platform. All of the hassles of building a container environment (networking, storage, security) are abstracted and integrated into a single solution. Security is extended with support for out of the box RBAC. Post deployment, Cisco Container Platform simplifies and automates platform updates and provides a single call support including the Google components.

Google Apigee has been proven by some of the world’s largest organizations to support API management in high-volume transactional environments. Apigee allows developers to modernize legacy applications while maintaining secure API connectivity, making it a powerful tool for accelerating application migration in a multicloud environment.

Once an application has been written to support Cisco Container Platform, it’s a simple task to deploy across a multicloud environment with Cisco CloudCenter. It’s as simple as extending your CI/CD pipeline to deploy where it makes the most sense for that application, on-prem or public cloud. Cisco CloudCenter becomes a single platform for automating testing, deployment and movement of applications anywhere across the multicloud.

Use Cases

But what does it mean for your business? Very simply, the Cisco Hybrid Cloud Platform for Google Cloud allows developers to focus on what they’re good at, development, and enables IT to focus on what they’re good at, providing services wherever the business requires it.

Develop Once – Deploy Anywhere: Avoid cloud lock-in and the high cost of refactoring an application to take advantage of multicloud. The Cisco/Google solution uses open technologies and allows you to develop using open standards which enable you to deploy and maintain the same application on-premise or in the cloud without added overhead or requiring different expertise.

Application Modernization: All customers have legacy applications that they would like to make more secure, feature-rich and easier to maintain. This platform would allow you to take the daunting task of a full application rewrite and allow you to break it down into smaller functional applications that can be containerized. This is accomplished through innovative use of Google’s Apigee and Cisco’s Container Platform. Thanks to Cisco’s adoption of upstream Kubernetes, Cisco’s Container Platform is an ideal candidate for modern containerized application development. Apigee provides secure access to your legacy application via a single API gateway and, as individual functions are modernized, Apigee can begin to route traffic to the new application running on Cisco’s Container Platform.

DevOps: The DevOps model is helping to accelerate development roadmaps across organizations large and small. This platform was built from the ground up with both development and operations in mind. Your operations teams will be able to provision isolated Kubernetes clusters and control the permissions the developers have to these environments. This allows your developers to focus on what they do best, developing, deploying and supporting their applications without having to worry about the underlying infrastructure or how to provision compute resources.

Innovate with WWT

The Google Hybrid Cloud Solution Lab builds on the market leading capabilities of WWT’s ATC to offer a holistic view into the vision and architecture of the solution. WWT’s extensive experience and capabilities across networking, data center, security and DevOps uniquely position us to show the incredible value of Google Hybrid Cloud Solutions. We are working side by side with Cisco and Google to deploy the full solution within our ATC. When complete, it will be the premier location for customers to learn, evaluate and design a Google Hybrid Cloud Solution and accelerate their multicloud journey.

In the meantime, WWT has proven, expert-level knowledge and capabilities in the core components that enable the Cisco Hybrid Cloud Platform for Google Cloud, and we invite our customers to take advantage of those today. With the ATC, our customers have 24/7 access, powered by advanced automation and incredible engineering talent, to a formidable array of technologies. Here are a few examples of how you can use the ATC today:

Learn how to automate multicloud with Cisco CloudCenter and its integration capabilities through demonstration and sandbox environments

Evaluate Cisco HyperFlex and design the best platform to host the on-premise portion of your new Cisco Hybrid Cloud Solution for Google Cloud

To learn more about the Cisco Hybrid Cloud Platform for Google Cloud or to take advantage of the ATC and the Google Hybrid Cloud Solution Lab when it is launched later this summer, reach out to your WWT account manager.

Author’s Note: Thank you to Jonathan King and John Weeks for their contributions to this post.

Leverage WWT's ServiceNow Automation & Orchestration expertise to accelerate your company's ServiceNow journey. Our ITSM practice and Services Catalog of more than 50 no-touch automations can help you get the most out of this exciting technology.

For most organizations, the ability to demonstrate compliance to an assessment program directly correlates to the maturity of their cyber security program. Learn more about WWT’s approach to integrated endpoint security architecture for our federal customers.

Endpoint security must be part of an overall security architecture and strategy. If all the areas referenced in this paper are addressed and integrated within an environment, the result will be a level of protection that far exceeds anything a single point product can provide.

Netrounds plays a key role in WWT’s service quality assurance offering through its ability to automatically test and monitor services from the end-user view immediately after provisioning or after updates or changes.

Automation is critical for reducing engineering time, effort and errors. But the same methods you use to improve engineering efficiency may not work for large scale rollouts or client services. Learn how WWT can help you make the right decisions for your business needs.